Rereading Frost by Linda Pastan
Here’s another one I read with my poetry pals. The second stanza is my favorite, and I certainly hope that there are still wonderful poems to be written!
I also wanted to share this quote (which seems appropriate now) that I think was in the beginning of Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime.
“It’s absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken a mortal wound—that he will never get over it. That is to say, permanence in poetry as in love is perceived instantly. It hasn’t to await the test of time.”
—Robert Frost
Rereading Frost
By Linda Pastan
Sometimes I think all the best poems
have been written already,
and no one has time to read them,
so why try to write more?
At other times though,
I remember how one flower
in a meadow already full of flowers
somehow adds to the general fireworks effect
as you get to the top of a hill
in Colorado, say, in high summer
and just look down at all that brimming color.
I also try to convince myself
that the smallest note of the smallest
instrument in the band,
the triangle for instance,
is important to the conductor
who stands there, pointing his finger
in the direction of the percussions,
demanding that one silvery ping.
And I decide not to stop trying,
at least not for a while, though in truth
I’d rather just sit here reading
how someone else has been acquainted
with the night already, and perfectly.
